CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshellubuntucommand-line
hma
hma

Reputation: 566

merge two folders and keeping the files have same name

I have multiple sources folder(these folders have a lot of files named such as ip address Ex: 192.168.2.1 ), I want to merge them in a target folder.

What is the ways of doing this operation on a Linux using terminal.

Source 1

/Desktop/source1/192.168.2.1
/Desktop/source1/192.168.2.2
/Desktop/source1/192.168.2.3

Source 2

/Desktop/source2/192.168.2.1
/Desktop/source2/192.168.2.2
/Desktop/source2/192.168.2.3

Source 3

/Desktop/source2/192.168.2.1

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

.

.

.

Target

/Desktop/target/192.168.2.1
/Desktop/target/192.168.2.2
/Desktop/target/192.168.2.3
/Desktop/target/192.168.2.1.copy
/Desktop/target/192.168.2.2.copy
/Desktop/target/192.168.2.3.copy
/Desktop/target/192.168.2.1.copy.copy

original files have no file extension I just named them as what they are but I am opening them in gedit or any text editor. The duplicated file suffix might be ('192.168.2.3.copy or 192.168.2.3_2 or anything just needs to be different)

What is the way of doing this operation with cp command, shell script or any other command in Linux?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 5764

Answers (2)

user4097263
user4097263

Reputation:

The answer by Munir is perfect. My reputation is too low to comment on his solution, but I would like to mention on it why this works:

cp -f --backup --suffix='.copy' source2/* target/

Normally --backup will backup the file in the target folder, by appending a "~" at the end. The suffix option changes the "~" with copy. So why does this solution change the name of the source file and not the target? It's the addition of the -f option in the line, which is a radically different behavior than what -f normally does. This is documented in the last paragraph of the man page:

As a special case, cp makes a backup of SOURCE when the force and backup options are given and SOURCE and DEST are the same name for an existing, regular file.

Upvotes: 1

Munir
Munir

Reputation: 3612

cp source1/* target/
cp -f --backup --suffix='.copy' source2/* target/

Just note that this will not add .copy suffix to any files that are in source2 but not in source1. That is, .copy will only be added for duplicate file names.

For multiple source folders, you can do something like:

cp source1/* target/
for i in {2..n} ; do
    cp -f --backup=numbered source${i}/* target/
done

Replace n with the your folder number. This will put a .~1~ for the first copy, .~2~ for the second copy and so on.

Upvotes: 1

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